


Tumbling Down

by kereia



Category: Leverage
Genre: Banter, Eliot's brew pub menu is a work of art, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Natural Disasters, Trapped, don't mess with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 06:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16571348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/pseuds/kereia
Summary: While tracking down an embezzling hedge fund manager in the Rocky Mountains, Parker, Eliot, and Hardison get caught in an avalanche.





	Tumbling Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



It was difficult to move.

Parker's eyes were wide open, but everything was pitch black.

Though, to be fair, even if she hadn't lost her flashlight somewhere along the way, it wouldn't have been of much use in her current predicament. Still, she wished they'd waited until morning to track down Meredith Graham.

Of course, seeing how they'd managed to mess up _that_ confrontation, the sleazy hedge fund manager would have probably been on her way to a non-extraditing country in the morning. (Not that the lack of an extradition treaty would have slowed them down, but as far as Meredith Graham was concerned, she and Hardison were FBI agents, and criminals liked their (seemingly) save back-up plans.)

As the informal leader of the team, Parker always had several of them herself, though none of them had included Meredith Graham bribing the hotel staff to tip her off should someone come looking for her.

Most of the time it was the little things that tripped you up.

Sometimes it was an avalanche.

Fortunately, the speed with which she was hurtling down the mountain could no longer be described as 'breakneck', so that was a good thing. Compared to those early moments of panic, the more sedate pace at which the snow had been moving for the past… How long had it been? A few seconds? Ten? Twenty? It was hard to keep track of time what with the whole 'fighting for survival' thing that had kept her occupied.

"Try to swim with the current. Try to stay on the surface," Eliot had shouted at her, seconds before they'd both been pulled off their feet.

Parker had wanted to yell back that they were half way up a mountain and not half way down a river, so how exactly was she supposed to swim in snow? You can't swim in snow.

Turned out, she'd been wrong about that. It was absolutely possible to swim in snow. At least, when it was rushing down a skiing slope, and it's own momentum kept it loose and flowing.

She really should have trusted Eliot on that.

Not that it had been easy to follow his advice. It may be possible to swim inside an avalanche, but it was the single most exhausting and terrifying thing she had every experienced. Wet and heavy, the snow had gotten into her mouth, her nose, and eyes, and the sheer power of its velocity had torn at her limbs whenever she'd kicked upwards. Worst off all, the avalanche had kept pulling her under, and by the fourth, or fifth, or tenth time she'd been submerged, she hadn't been able to get back to the surface.

It was save to say that she preferred jumping off skyscrapers.

Anyway, the avalanche was losing it's momentum. That was the important bit. She tried to focus on that.

On the up side, it meant that it had reached the valley and she was therefore no longer in danger of dropping off a cliff and plummeting to her death. On the down side, the snow would only get more compact, the more the avalanche slowed down, so it would probably be a good idea to make sure that she had at least enough air and wriggle room to start digging her way to the surface, once the avalanche had come to a full stop.

Eliot had told her to take shallow, even breaths, so that's what she did. He'd also told her to curl up and cover her face with her arms if she went under, and the snow had still been moving fast enough for her to follow those instructions.

The roaring of the snow faded to a fainter sliding sound.

She was almost out of time.

Pressing her arms forward, she pushed the snow away from her, until she'd created a small bubble in front of her face.

The sliding sound disappeared.

Into the eerie silence fell the panting of her breath (Slow, even, shallow, she reminded herself sternly.) and the pounding of her heart.

"Eliot?" she asked out loud. She had no idea if their coms still worked, but she had to try. "Eliot, can you hear me?"

She counted the seconds while she waited for a reply that never came.

 _There could be lot of reasons why he's not answering_ , she told herself. _Maybe he_ _lost his com. Maybe the signal c_ _a_ _n_ _'t get through the snow. Maybe he's unconscious._

She stopped herself there, realizing that unconscious inside an avalanche was as good as dead. Better not to think about that. Better to think about how to get out of here.

"Hardison?" she tried, more for the sake of being thorough, because Alec would have already checked in if could have.

He'd been far ahead of them chasing down their target on the second snowmobile when the first rumble of the avalanche had caught her and Eliot by surprise. To their embarrassment, Meredith Graham had managed to steal the first snow mobile right out from under them. 

The last thing Parker had heard from him were his stubborn protests when Eliot had told him to keep going and not turn back for them. However, she had no idea if he'd listened and gotten himself to safety, or if he'd turned around.

Parker frowned.

On second thought, she actually had a pretty good idea about whether or not he'd turned around.

And if it turned out that he'd gotten hurt because of it, she'd kick his ass.

Gently, but firmly.

Giving up on her coms, Parker blinked into the darkness and tried to figure out which way was up.

 

* * *

 

Hardison crawled out of a snowdrift, and slowly got to his feet. He shook himself and brushed snow off his jacket, then promptly had to bent over and brace his hands on his knees as a wave of dizziness swept through him.

Shouting Parker and Eliot's names, he tried to make out the snowmobiles in the darkness.

Even though the moon was barely a quarter full, the snow reflected enough of its light for him to make out the towering shadows of several fir trees and the hulking lumps of metal between them.

He lumbered over to where the motor sleds had collided. His steps weren't quite steady as he tried to regain his equilibrium after the rather spectacular dive he'd just taken.

He glared at the warped front ski. "Did I tell you to go right through a group of tress? Did I? No, I most certainly did not," he chided the motor sled. "But you had to get caught up in the edge of the avalanche, didn't you? We could have avoided that, if you'd gone a little bit faster, but I guess that was asking too much."

He swayed on his feet and steadied himself against a nearby tree. His head was throbbing, and when he shoved a hand beneath the hood of his jacket, he could feel a lump at the back of his head. He winced and pulled his hand back.

"Parker? Eliot?" he asked into the silence, but it wasn't until he brushed some snow off his ear that he realized that he'd lost his com unit.

"Shit."

His first instinct was to look for it, but the odds of finding the tiny earbud were slim to none, especially since he didn't know where exactly he'd lost it.

His chest tight with worry, he called out for them again, hoping that they had somehow managed to escape the avalanche, but the only sound that came back to him was the faint echo of his own voice... and a low groan from behind him.

Meredith Graham, lurched out of the trees, snow falling off her white winter jacket, just as Hardison whirled around.

He barely saw her reach underneath her jacket, but by the time he came close, she'd whipped out a gun, and he was staring down its barrel.

He didn't think; he just reacted.

Months of Eliot drilling hand to hand combat lessons into his brain – of forcing him to repeat moves over and over again until they'd become second nature – had paid off. One moment, he was blinking at the weapon in Graham's grasp, and a second later, he held the gun in his own hand, while Graham was clutching her wrist and wincing in pain.

"Oh, wow. That actually worked," he said with a grin while he stared at the gun in surprise. Then he shrugged. "I guess, I'll have to stop complaining whenever Eliot takes me aside for anther one of those lessons."

Not that he actually had any intention to do so. The annoyed twitch that Eliot got beneath his left eye, whenever Hardison complained about the drills never failed to amuse. But he made a mental note to upgrade Eliot's phone at the next opportunity.

Though maybe he could lay off the complaints just a little bit. At least for a while. It wasn't as if he and Parker didn't know other ways to make Eliot twitch. The man found pleasure in his own annoyance, and he and Parker had become very good at giving him exactly what he needed. Especially Parker knew how to make him beg.

"Now, I bet you thought you could get away with it, didn't you?" he said. "And you're good. I'll give you that. Sneaking around behind us and stealing our ride. But I got you anyway, didn't I?"

Meredith coolly raised her eyebrows. "Gloating? Really? Don't you have more important things to do right now?"

Haridson's mouth compressed into a thin line. "You know what? I _do_ have more important things to do. Which is why you're going to hurry up and untie your shoe laces, so I can tie you to what's left of the motor sled and look for my team."

Meredith raised her hands and slowly began to walk backwards. "And if I don't? What then? You don't look like the type who would shoot me."

"Stop right where you are."

"I could cut you in," Meredith offered. "How do twenty percent sound? All you have to do is let me go."

"Not interested. You're going to jail."

"Are you sure? How about thirty percent? That's a lot of money. We can both go back to town, and I'll wire you the money."

"Do I look like the kind of guy who cares about money? People I care about are trapped under god only knows how many tons of snow right now, and you're wasting my time. Untie your laces."

Meredith tilted her head. "Look, I get it. You think of them as your friends. You probably trust them with your life, but ask yourself: Would they do the same for you? I learned the hard way that you can only rely on yourself, and just because you think they'll be there for you, doesn't mean..."

"You don't know anything about us. They're not my friends; they're family, and I'm done talking to you." Hardison was in no mood for mind games. He had no time to loose. "Fine. You know what, go ahead. We found you once, we'll find you again.”

Meredith blinked at him in surprise. "You're letting me go?"

"You're not important right now. And the fact that you don't even understand that, makes me feel sorry for you. So go on. Enjoy your money. But know this, you'll always have to look over your shoulder from now on, because the minute I get Eliot and Parker out of this mess, we'll be hunting you. And we're very good at what we do. We will find you.”

Her smile was small but sardonic. "I'll take my chances."

Hardison made a disgusted sound and lowered the gun. "Go off then."

Turning away from her, he fished his cell phone out of his pocket and tried to call mountain rescue. The phone lit up the night as the slow, trudging steps of Meredith Graham disappeared in the distance.

He couldn't get a signal.

Cursing, he lifted the cell phone above his head, but it was to no avail. If he wanted to help Eliot and Parker, he'd have to do it on his own. Shoving the phone back into his pocket, he crouched down next to the snowmobiles and wrenched open the storage compartments underneath the seats.

A couple of flashlights where the first items that fell into his hands, and he unzipped his thick coat to stash one of them in an inner pocket, while he placed the second one next to him. A thermal blanket was near the bottom of both compartments, and Hardison took these as well. He had a feeling that he would need them.

He frantically rummaged through the storage compartments, but other than a small, spare canister of gas, a package of marshmallows of all things, and a windproof lighter, he found nothing of use. The lighter went into another inside pocket before he zipped his coat back up. Then he ripped off the front part of one of the snowmobile's skis, which was already half torn and severely bent out of shape by the collision.

Picking up the second flashlight, Hardison trudged across the valley toward the avalanche's runout zone.

He didn't think about how slim his chances were of finding Eliot and Parker inside the vast snow field that filled up the valley.

He wound find them.

He had to.

 

* * *

 

Eliot groaned when he regained consciousness.

Blinking his eyes open, he found nothing but darkness in front of him, but that was hardly surprising. His head was throbbing, and he couldn't move.

Not a good combination.

He felt the snow press down on him, and realized that if he didn't do something fast, he would be in serious trouble. Or, to be accurate, _more_ serious trouble.

The snow piled up behind him and pressed his face against something solid.

He moved his head, wincing as a sharp pain lanced through his temple. It was difficult to raise his arms as every move pushed against the wall of snow encasing him, but he managed to bring his hands close to his face and pressed them against the object in front of him.

He figured that the avalanche had probably thrown him against a tree trunk, and that's why he'd lost consciousness for a moment. He couldn't have been out for long, since the snow was still moving, albeit slowly. But even those few seconds or minutes might have placed him in serious jeopardy. The avalanche was slowing, and Eliot was running out of time.

Just turning his head cost a near inhuman amount of effort. A fresh wave of pain washed over him, and he groaned as he pushed further, forcing his face and then his torso to turn until he could feel the rough scratch of the bark against his forehead. Definitely a tree then.

In some ways that was good. At least it narrowed down his choice of directions to two, instead of leaving him completely bereft of any indication in which way the surface and breathable air could be found. He tried to lift his arms, but the snow was growing more compact by the second. The motion strained his already aching muscles.

"I am so fucked," he said out loud, acutely conscious of how little air he had left.

"Eliot?" Parker voice suddenly came into his ear. "Eliot, are you there?"

Eliot closed his eyes as a wave of relief washed through him.

"Yeah," he ground out. "I'm here. Lost consciousness for a few seconds. How about you? Can you dig your way out?"

"Oh, I am so glad to hear you voice right now," Parker said. "I can't reach Alec."

"Can you get out?" Eliot repeated lowly. His mind was swimming, and he had trouble concentrating on the words.

"I think so," Parker said, a note of worry in her voice. "I wasn't sure at first which way was up. I thought that I was pretty much standing upright, but I spit, and as it turns out I am actually lying on my back, so... That was kind of gross."

"That's good though. You know which way to dig. Do you have enough room to move?"

"Yeah." Parker said over his ear piece. "I did what you told me, and I have enough room to move my hands and some leeway with my arms. How about you?"

Eliot closed his eyes. "I'm good," he lied. "Just focus on yourself for now. I'll race you to the top. Whoever gets out of here last has to clean the brewery kitchen for the next month. How about that?"

It took Parker a moment to reply, and his chest grew tight. When her voice finally reached his ear, it sounded oddly tight. "That's a deal."

"You sure you're alright?"

An exasperated huff. "Yeah. Are you sure _you're_ alright? Because you don't sound like it."

"You're imagining things."

"Don't do that," Parker said quietly. "People told me I was imagining things all the time when I was a kid. We don't do that to each other, Eliot. We're better than that."

In spite of the cold surrounding him, Eliot could feel sweat collecting under his hood at the back of his neck.

"No, you're right. We don't. I'm sorry. I'm... well, I'm stuck. Got thrown against a tree. I feel kinda woozy."

He could hear Parker take a deep breath and suppressed the urge to tell her not to waste oxygen because of him.

"Okay. That's... okay. Can you move at all?"

"Barely. I only came too when the avalanche had almost come to a stop. I don't know which way is up."

"You said, you were thrown against a tree. Can you feel any twigs and..."

"Figure out which way the needles are growing. Yeah, that would be good, but I can barely feel the trunk. Not sure if this fir has branches that low."

"Okay." There was a scratching sound. "So I'll just dig my way out, and then I'll come for you. It'll be fine. I bet Hardison already has a plan and probably mobilized the entire Nation Guard to come looking for us."

"You really want them to come up here?" Eliot asked. His voice sounded oddly flat in his own ears, in spite of the note of levity he was trying to inject in it. "Government types are not people we want to have around, Parker"

"I'll take it," Parker replied. Then softer. "Today, I'll take it."

Eliot closed his eyes. He could have told her that her chances of finding him were slim to none. He could have told her that the odds of mountain rescue or the National Guard or whatever making it up here before he ran out of air were even lower.

He said nothing. It wasn't as if Parker didn't already know.

"I'll wait for you." he replied eventually.

"Hold on," Parker told him, her voice demanding in spite of the way it wavered with unspoken emotion. "You just promise me that you'll hold on. I'll come and get you. You hear me? I'll get you out of here."

"I will."

There must have been something in his tone that rattled her, because he could here the sudden vehemence in her voice as she spoke to him. "Tell me you believe me, Eliot. You tell me right now."

He jerked at the harshness of her tone and blinked into the darkness, momentarily disoriented. Had he lost consciousness for a second or was that just the dizziness caused by his head injury?

"Eliot?" Parker nearly shouted into his ear.

"I believe you," he ground. He tried to get it together. "I believe you, Parker."

"Talk to me."

"I _am_ talking to you."

A scoff, but her voice lost some of its tension. "Don't play dumb. I want to know that you're still here."

He should tell her that talking used up oxygen, but he didn't have the heart. Besides, Parker wasn't stupid. She knew. And if he'd really passed out for a moment just then, it was a risk worth taking.

His head was all muddled, and his eye lids were drooping again. Wasn't there something he was supposed to be doing? Something important.

 _I have to dig_ , he thought. _Dig my way out of here. Dig a way up to let air in._

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Desserts."

That took him by surprise.

"Desserts?" he asked dimly.

"Yeah."

"You and I are buried under several tons of snow and ice, and you want me to talk about pastries?"

"You and Alec where arguing this morning. About cake."

He grumbled under his breath at that.

"What was that?"

"Beer and cake are a tricky combination,” he repeated as he forced his tiered limbs to move. "Hardison has this stupid idea about adding some of his molecular baking experiments to the dessert menu."

"And that's a bad thing?"

He worked his hand up the tree trunk, scratching snow into the space left below his hand. "I put a lot of work into that brewpub menu, Parker. How would you feel, if you ordered a nice dark stout, and one of your options on the menu where chamomile sponge with bacon flavor?"

"Oh, that sounds yummy." Parker said with genuine appreciation in her voice.

If he didn't already have a head wound, Eliot would have banged his head against the tree trunk.

"I forgot who I was talking to."

 

* * *

 

Progress was measured in inches. Every clump of snow Parker pried loose fell onto her face and melted on her skin, until the cold water ran down her cheeks and into her ear and hair.

Parker was no stranger to small, enclosed spaces. She had spent hours crawling through ventilation shafts, maintenance ducts and underground tunnels. Claustrophobia was something that happened to other people.

Until now.

She felt entombed, scratching at the snow as if it where the lid of a coffin and wondered if this is how Alec must have felt, when he'd been buried alive in a graveyard.

In the beginning – when Archie had first taken her under his wing – he had taught her breathing exercises that helped her maintain control over her body, but she could hear the ticking of a clock in the back of her mind, and she didn't dare to take even a moment to center herself.

She resolutely ignored that feeling of urgency that told her to move faster whenever she'd carved another inch out of the snowy ceiling above her. Instead, she focused on Eliot ranting about the intricacies of his menu.

"I'm just saying, my entire menu is designed to emphasize natural flavors. If Hardison wants to but some bacon flavored cake on a dessert menu, it won't be mine. He'll have to get his own brewpub."

Parker frowned. Was it wishful thinking or did the snow above her feel looser than before?

"Well, technically, the brewpub is his," she grunted.

"Then he'll have to get a different one, because he's not changing the menu of this one" Eliot said stubbornly, and in spite of his aggravated tone, it made Parker smile how protective he'd become of the home and business they'd established in Portland.

None of them were used to growing roots; their lives had always been to complicated for that kind constancy. Yet, since Nathan had brought them together, they'd gradually come to the realization that as long as they were together, they'd always have a home.

A large clump fell from the snow ceiling right into Parker's mouth. She sputtered and shook her head.

"Parker?" Eliot's concerned voice was immediately in her ear. "Talk to me."

Blinking into the darkness, Parker smiled at the sparse twinkling of stars above her and sucked in a deep lung-full of crisp mountain air.

"I'm out. I made it."

A short laugh escaped her, and the feeling of relief bloomed brighter in her chest when she heard a very familiar voice shouting her name.

"And Hardison is here, too. Hold on, Eliot. Just hold on a bit longer, okay? We'll come and get you."

 

* * *

 

Hardison's heart had already been hammering inside his chest from the exertion of trudging through the snow field, when the sound of Parker calling his name sent it into overdrive.

"Parker?" he shouted as he veered sharply into the direction of her voice. The beam of his flashlight skittered wildly across the snow. "Parker, where are you?"

"I'm over here." A labored grunt preceded her words, and Hardison's face broke into a smile when the circle of light finally came to rest on a gloved hand waving at him through the snow.

He plodded forward, trying to close the distance even as he sank into the snow up to his knees. Heedless of the obstacle, he pulled his leg back out and crawled the last two steps toward Parker's hand.

The small, elated whooping noise she made when his fingers closed around her glove made him almost light-headed with relief.

"I've got you. Oh, thank god, I found you. Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine, but Eliot isn't. We need to hurry."

"Okay." He reached for the broken ski. "Okay, pull your hand back. I'll dig you out."

 

* * *

 

Eliot didn't know how much timed had passed since Hardison had found Parker. Unwilling to distract them, he stayed quiet and listened to their grunts and groans and muffled curses as Hardison helped Parker dig herself out of the snow.

His eyelids were dropping, and though he jerked them open and forced his hands to keep digging, he was sure that he was losing consciousness for small periods of time.

His pulse was pounding through his head – a dull, deep throbbing that rang in ears.

"Eliot?"

He blinked slowly into the darkness.

"Eliot, man. Talk to me."

Swallowing heavily, Eliot opened his cold lips. "Hardison?" His voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

"Listen, you need to stay awake, okay? Parker gave me her earpiece. I lost mine. I got her out, and we're coming for you. Just hold on a little while longer."

Taking a shallow breath, Eliot tried to make sense of the words. The emotions in Hardison's voice registered, first. Concern, fear, denial. They settled like a lump of coal inside his chest.

"Hardison, you don't even know where to look," he said flatly. _Almost out of oxygen_ , he thought dully. Of all the ways to go...

"Listen to me. You just listen to me, you thick-headed mule. Since when has that ever stopped any of us?" There was a spike of fear in Haridon's voice. "Are we a team that gives up? Are we?"

Eliot's arms felt heavy, as if it had been weighed down with lead.

"Eliot?"

"I hear you," he said tiredly. His fingers scratched ineffectually at the layers of wet snow.

A moment of silence followed, though he wasn't sure if he'd simply lost consciousness again.

"Eliot, I swear, if you pass out on us, I will... I will throw your entire precious menu into the trash and write a new one."

 _That_ made his eyes snap open.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, I would. You better believe I would. I'll toss it right out. All those natural flavors you like so much? Gone. Molecular gastronomy it is, my friends. Cakes that taste like pasta Alfredo, steaks sauce that tastes of chocolate and basil and lavender, a lemon vinaigrette with a slight aftertaste of..."

"If you replace so much as ONE dish with you're freaky Frankenstein cooking, I swear to god, I will haunt you from the after life."

"That's what I wanted to hear. Now, all you've got to do is stay awake and make sure that won't be necessary."

As spaced out as he felt, he could still hear the satisfied grin in Alec's voice.

"Damn it, Hardison," he grumbled, though he had to admit that Alec's threat had done the job. His annoyance didn't make up for the lack of air, but it did give him an incentive to keep his hands moving.

 

* * *

 

"Think about it," Hardison panted as he plodded towards a crops of fir trees. "A succulent filet mignon that comes with a taste explosion of dark stout and cinnamon when you bite into it. Doesn't that sound awesome to you?"

"I sounds delicious," Parker replied as she walked further out into the slope holding up her cell phone in hopes of getting just one damn bar.

"I will kill both of you when I get out of here," Eliot said sullenly in his ear.

Hardison tried really hard not to freak out at how weak his voice sounded. Masking his concern as best as he could, he kept talking. "I don't know why you're so resistant to progress, Eliot. You've got to go with the times."

"Good cooking is timeless, you heathen," Eliot shot back, indignantly. "So will you just stop..."

"Oh, I've got a signal," Parker shouted, interrupting them both. "No, wait. It's gone again." She took a step back, and suddenly her face lit up under her phone's screen. "There it is."

Hardison hurried over to her. "Finally. Call mountain rescue," he said, but Parker was already tapping out the number.

He practically ripped the zipper off his jacket in his haste to get to his own phone. "Eliot, we have a signal,” he said as he tore off his gloves.

"I heard," came the faint reply.

"Now, with just a little bit of luck..."

"When are we ever lucky?" Eliot murmured.

"Excuse you. Have you met us? We make our own luck," he shot back as his fingers flew across the display.

 

* * *

 

"So, how did you do it?" Eliot asked while he glared at Hardison out of the depth of his hospital bed. The glare wasn't strictly aimed at Hardison himself (he had saved his life, after all) but rather at the Tupperware container that Alec had tried to foist upon him with a gleam in his eyes.

It had been a very distinctive gleam.

Eliot had crossed his arms in front of his chest and refused to take the box.

His refusal had done nothing to dampen Hardison's mega-watt smile.

As far as Eliot was concerned, the whole thing was highly suspicious.

Parker hopped onto the bed next to him and none-to-gently prodded the aching lump on the side of his head.

"Stop that," Eliot said and jerked his head away.

"They said, you hit you're head on the tree," Parker explained

At the same time, Hardison shrugged and finally deigned to answer his question.

"I told you. We make our own luck."

Eliot opened his mouth, then closed it again, praying for patience when Parker's hand drifted to his hair again.

"You walked around up on that mountain for miles until you found a spot where you barely even got a signal. How did you manage to locate my phone when I was buried under five feet of snow?”

Alec's grin only got wider. "I repurposed a satellite."

"You repurposed a satellite." Eliot repeated. "With your phone."

Parker's hand came to rest on the back of his head, where she softly scratched her fingers against his scalp. It was... not unpleasant.

"I'm sorry, is that disbelief I heard in your voice just now?" Alec asked. His pressed his fist against his mouth, in a gesture of abject despair. "That hurts, Eliot. It really does."

Eliot rolled his eyes.

"Didn't you listen when he told you that he can practically run a small country with that thing?" Parker asked. She leaned her forehead against his temple... and okay, maybe he wasn't _completely_ avers to resting his head in the crook of her neck.

His arms remained crossed over his chest, though.

As a matter of principle.

"What else can you do with that thing?" he asked half irritated, half curious.

"Find Meredith Graham for one thing," Hardison replied.

Parker's head came up at that. "You know where she is?"

"Damn straight, I do."

"Oooohhh. Let's go get her." She jumped off the bed with an eager smile.

Eliot tried to snatch her back, because... well, alright, he wasn't entirely opposed to cuddling. Not that he was overly fond of it, of course, but Parker and Hardison liked it, and he'd made it his mission to keep them happy, so he occasionally made the sacrifice.

She was too fast for him though, and he quickly covered his failed attempt to pull her back by throwing the blanket off his lower body.

"Yeah, let's get to it," he said.

Hardison looked mildly alarmed, but he apparently knew better than to argue with him, because he didn't make a move to stop him.

He did thrust the Tupperware container against his chest, though.

"Don't you want to eat your cake first? Parker and I made it especially for you."

Eliot glared at him. "Does it taste like bacon?"

"No."

"Shrimp and tuna casserole?"

Alec rolled his eyes at him.

"It's chocolate cake. It tastes like chocolate."

"And chilli and peppermint." Parker added with an enthusiastic smile. "I made the frosting."

The frosting depicted a snowman baring his name and the words 'Thank you for not dying' beneath it.

Eliot didn't smile. He absolutely did not.

He cautiously swiped his finger through the frosting and put it into his mouth.

"This is actually no half-bad," he acknowledged reluctantly.

Parker wrapped her arms around Hardison's waist and smiled up at him. "I told you, he'd love it."

 


End file.
